Ken Turino, Sara Bhatia, and I are currently compiling the index for our book Interpreting Christmas at Museums and Historic Sites, while the other authors are meticulously reviewing the proofs for any final corrections. But we are much more excited to announce that we have a colorful cover featuring images from Old World Wisconsin and Strawbery Banke, and that Rowman and Littlefield have made the 270-page book available for pre-orders at this link.
To get a start on the holidays, join us in July when we’ll be hosting a live AASLH webinar, “Jingle All the Way: Maximizing Your Museum’s Holiday Potential.” Drawing from some of the insights in the book, we’ll discuss how your historic house or history museum can leverage December’s holiday season to enhance community engagement. Mark your calendar for July 23 at 3 p.m. Eastern and secure your spot by registering here for $45 ($25 for AASLH members).
For a preliminary glimpse inside Interpreting Christmas, I’m sharing the proofs for the table of contents and introduction. Just remember, they’re publisher’s proofs so they are subject to change!
The Reimagining the Historic House Museum workshop at the Decorative Arts Center of Ohio in June 2023.
“Reimagining the Historic House Museum,” the one-day workshop co-led by me and Ken Turino (Historic New England) will be held on Friday, April 19, 2024, from 8:30 am to 5:00 pm at Montpelier, a 1780s house museum in Laurel, Maryland (between DC and Baltimore). This workshop is part of the professional development series produced by AASLH. Registration is $325 but it’s $200 for AASLH members (and you receive an additional $50 discount if you register by March 22!). Participation is limited to 35 people.
Our workshop, while inspired by the book Reimagining Historic House Museums (2019), provides a more comprehensive hands-on exploration of house museums’ challenges. We assess current programs using a “double-bottom” line for a holistic view, analyze influencing forces to pinpoint opportunities and hurdles, and spotlight how house museums have successfully reinvented themselves. While the day is rich with information and activities, we ensure a well-deserved lunch break and networking time. You’ll leave with new tools and ideas to enhance your historic site and have an enjoyable experience.
It’s been several years since I attended an AASLH annual meeting due to the pandemic and conflicts with my teaching schedule, but I plan to be in Mobile, Alabama in September 2024 (I’m hoping to see the Clotilda–National Geographic called it the best museum that opened in 2023!). Professional conferences are one of the best ways to mentally stand above your daily work and compare what you’re doing with the rest of the field. You can compare experiences, solve problems, share solutions, and be inspired. Plus I can share meals with some of my colleagues (and meet new ones!).
I’ll not only be attending but hope to lead a session or two to support the good work happening at history organizations around the country. It’s a terrific way to work with others to address a hot topic, provide different perspectives on a common issue, and yes, shape the future of the field–so I hope you’ll join me in proposing a session to support your colleagues.
AASLH has moved beyond the traditional three-panelists-and-a-moderator format to include roundtable discussions, in-depth workshops, debates, and a series of quick presentations to allow more variety, so if you have an idea for an educational session, there’s probably an interesting way to present it. I’m having a hard time choosing!
Like most conferences, a committee reviews proposals to assemble the program. Because this is a national conference, they’re looking for sessions that address issues that are affecting history organizations nationally, offer a national perspective on a topic through a geographically diverse session, or relate to the conference theme. Avoid “show and tell” sessions about a program or event that’s unique to your organization and can’t be easily duplicated by others (plus they tend to be really boring self-congratulatory panels). Finally, the attendees want results to justify the time and money they’ve spent at the conference. What will they learn? It’s got to be more than “understand” and “appreciate”–that’s far too vague. By the end of the session, what will they specifically know, what will they be able to do, and how will they feel (e.g., more confident, less confused)?
AASLH is accepting proposals until December 20, 2023. Because proposals are prepared online, it may be difficult to know what information they are seeking, so I’ve attached a one-page summary of the core questions to answer.
This small selection of historic sites operated by The National Society of The Colonial Dames reveals the enormous diversity of house museums and historic sites in the United States.
In 2007, I helped organize the Forum on Historic Site Stewardship in the 21st Century, which resulted in an influential issue of Forum Journal that laid out the major challenges and opportunities, including the need for financial sustainability, a willingness to change in response to the needs of the community, and a balance between the needs of buildings, landscapes, collections, and the visiting public. It also recognized that museum standards may not be the best practices for historic sites and that the profession “must develop new measures, beyond attendance, that document the quality of visitor engagement at sites and the extent of community outreach beyond the bounds of historic sites.”
So what has happened in the 16 years that followed? We’ll find out this week as the American Association for State and Local History hosts a virtual summit on the Sustainability, Relevance, and the Future of Historic House Museums on July 11-12. Sessions will address measuring the impact of house museums, broadening interpretation, care of buildings and landscapes, and the evolution of mission statements.
Join Conny Graft and Max van Balgooy on May 24 at 3:00 pm Eastern for a ninety-minute webinar on interpretive planning as we prepare for the U.S. 250th anniversary in 2026. To help you feel more confident in this specialized topic, we will discuss the basic process of interpretive planning, provide a simple rubric to develop goals, and distinguish topics and themes (and why themes are more valuable). As a bonus, we’ll briefly mention ways to identify target audiences and expand your thinking about methods and formats. Registration is $20; $10 for AASLH members.
It’s the start of a three-part series on interpreting the 250th at historic sites and house museums. Other sessions will dive into the field-wide themes for the 250th with Ashley Jordan (African American Museum in Philadelphia) and Steve Murray (Alabama Department of Archives and History) and offer an interactive platform to workshop ideas with fellow practitioners with Sarah Pharaon (Dialogic Consulting). Whether you have a clear tie to the Revolution or not, this webinar series will help you make history relevant and captivating for your audience. Attend all three webinars for $55; $25 for AASLH members.
The third edition of the Encyclopedia of Local History, edited by Amy Wilson, is now available for free to members of the American Association for State and Local History. The print version is a nearly two-inch thick, 814-page resource to a wide range of topics related to the issues and practices in local history, but now available digitally as a pdf to AASLH members. This edition includes my contributions on mission, vision, values and house museums in the 21st century, plus a photo of the Gamble House—but there are dozens of experts who share their knowledge of the field in one place.
For more details, visit the AASLH Resource Center or you’re not a member, you can purchase it for $161.50 (hmm, membership is less than half that cost).
Our last Reimagining House Museums workshop was held at Dumbarton House in Washington, DC in June 2019!
Ken Turino and I will once again lead our workshops on reimagining historic house museums in 2023 after taking several years off due to the pandemic. Our first workshop will be held at the Gamble House in Pasadena, California on Friday, April 1 and our second will be held at the Decorative Arts Center of Ohio in Lancaster, Ohio on Thursday, June 22. AASLH is managing the workshop and registration is $325 but it’s $200 for AASLH members (and it’s $150 if you register by February 1!). Participation is limited to 25 people for the April workshop.
The workshop is closely related to the book, Reimagining Historic House Museums (2019), but we take a much deeper dive into the challenges facing house museums, assess current programs against a “double-bottom” line for a big-picture perspective, analyze the five forces that affect programs and events to find opportunities and obstacles, and highlight some of the ways that house museums have reinvented themselves. The day is packed with information and activities, but we take a good break in the middle of the day for lunch and we get to meet lots of other people who are working hard to make their historic site better. Plus it’s great fun!
Max van Balgooy with Robert Indiana’s Numbers 0-9 at Newfields (Indianapolis Museum of Art)
Seven is the number associated with completeness and perfection, but I’m not perfect and rarely satisfied, so before I complete seven years as director of the History Leadership Institute (HLI), I’m turning the chair over to someone else.
When I was appointed director in 2017, applications had fallen for several years and we held the Seminar with just thirteen people, accepting everyone that applied. If this continued, it would no longer be financially feasible to offer the Seminar. I was puzzled because the program had a terrific reputation in the field and saw its impact on my friends and colleagues.
To develop a new vision for the Seminar for Historical Administration, a wall in the Seminar classroom became a space for exploring ideas.
While we gathered for three weeks in November 2017 for the Seminar at the Indiana Historical Society, I worked on a side project to rethink the program to make it more sustainable and attractive. In the usual HLI fashion, I sketched out ideas on flipcharts spread out on the classroom wall, asking everyone who came into the room for their reactions and ideas. By the end of the Seminar, I had diagrammed a long-range plan with immediate and short-term recommendations that included:
Affirming its focus on organizational leadership and personal leadership.
Changing the name from the Seminar for Historical Administration to shift the emphasis to leadership.
Moving the organizational structure from a partnership among several history organizations to AASLH to better facilitate administration and ensure longterm support.
Considering alternatives to the three-week residential format to better serve mid-career history professionals.
The Class of 2022 celebrating their graduation from the HLI Seminar.
The History Leadership Institute, AASLH’s professional development program for mid-career history professionals, introduced its long-running Seminar in a new format in June.
In 1959, the Seminar began as an effort to train newly graduated history students and directors of history museums in the unique skills of managing museums, historic sites, and archives in a six-week program held at Colonial Williamsburg, During the decades that followed, the Seminar has continually changed to meet the needs of the field and explore new and emerging practices.
When your history organization is modeling itself on other museums or historical societies, are you choosing the right ones? Are they doing things that are well within your capacity or are you following an impossible dream? There’s nothing wrong with observing the extraordinary leaders in the field, but if you’re modeling your life on a superhero, you may be destined for an avoidable series of crashes and burns. You would have been much more successful had you devoted your time and energy on more achievable efforts.
For example, Historical Organizations (NTEE Code A80) are “organizations that promote awareness of and appreciation for history and historical artifacts,” which is mostly composed of local historic sites, house museums, and memorials that are not solely history museums or historical societies. A sample of Historical Organizations shows that many focus on local history, support museums, or memorialize people, places, or events (see Table 1). Of the 2,500 Historical Organizations providing IRS Forms 990 in 2017, nearly 40 percent include the words “memorial,” “foundation,” “friends,” or “association” in their names.
Engaging Places 